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No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

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Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#151

Post by tavavex »

db48x wrote: post #136
fakedang wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the US is Americans treating their Constitution like some kind of Bible, untouchable and beyond reproach, when in reality it should have been a constantly evolving document. South Africa has one of the best constitutions in the world on paper because the authors very recently had to reconcile with and forgo their apartheid past. And they had a number of templates to adapt from, including the US, Fran…

Our Constitution can evolve. This whole case is about an amendment to the Constitution! We don't evolve it by reinterpreting the text but by amending the text.

This was true at some point in history, but not now. It's been 34 years since the last constitutional amendment in the US, 55 years since the last successful proposal. And arguably almost the last hundred or so years of their amendments are minor, the heavy-hitters that everyone quotes and sees as truly changing the direction of the country are all from the 18th and 19th centuries.

There will probably be no more amendments in the foreseeable future, possibly ever. The US does the exact opposite of what you said - they don't amend, they reinterpret. All the schools of thought that enable creative interpretations for twisting ancient, outdated writing into what you want it to say are because of that. For all intents and purposes, the US constitution is seen as unchangeable.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#152

Post by db48x »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
TheRealPomax wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the law clearly says "deprive" not "provide". You'll have to show how folks are being deprived of water if you want to argue this line of reasoning, "providing contaminated water" is not covered by this text, and has the trivial rebutal that no one is forced to accept said water, even if the alternative is a shit situation. That situation does not deprive them of life, liberty, or property, and so there is no…

Government officials intentionally giving someone lead poisoning is depriving them of life. I'm 100% fine with "there's no Constitutional requirement for a jurisdiction to provide a water supply" - plenty of folks live on well water. If you're going to provide one, though, you're responsible for it. Similarly, my town is not required to provide internet access to its residents. If my town does decide to provide inter…

No, it really isn’t. Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life. Exposure to low levels of lead in drinking water will not kill anyone so the Constitution just doesn’t apply. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is. We must look to our own safety and security.

One way we do that is by banding together with our neighbors to form cities or other municipalities that tax us and use the proceeds to build safe water systems. If we elect untrustworthy or incompetent people to run those water systems then we have no one to blame but ourselves. If a city doesn’t have a law requiring the administrators of the water system to speak truthfully to the public then that is the people’s fault, not the government’s fault.

Honestly though I bet we’ll find that the administrators have technically been telling the truth. We have federal standards for things like water safety that are used to regulate water providers (which are not always public entities, mind you). Those standards do tell us how much lead in the water is acceptable and how much is unsafe, but those are two different numbers. The acceptable level is well below the threshold of safety. When this eventually gets to a trial in front of a jury I bet the administrators will argue that they were perfectly correct; that the water was safe because the levels of contaminates, although elevated, were below harmful levels.

The plaintiffs also complain about repeated boil–water notices, but that may not help their case. Any time you dig up a water pipe to repair or replace it then people using that water will need to boil it. Those notices are themselves proof that the utility was doing maintenance and repair work (presumably with the goal of fixing the problem), not proof of incompetence.

I’m not sure I’d want to be on that jury.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#153

Post by ceejayoz »

db48x wrote: post #152
ceejayoz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government officials intentionally giving someone lead poisoning is depriving them of life. I'm 100% fine with "there's no Constitutional requirement for a jurisdiction to provide a water supply" - plenty of folks live on well water. If you're going to provide one, though, you're responsible for it. Similarly, my town is not required to provide internet access to its residents. If my town does decide to provide inter…

No, it really isn’t. Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life. Exposure to low levels of lead in drinking water will not kill anyone so the Constitution just doesn’t apply. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is. We must look to our own safety and security. One way we do that is by banding together with our neighbors to form cities or…

> Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life.

It does promise the government can't take it from you without due process.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#154

Post by db48x »

ceejayoz wrote: post #153
db48x wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn’t. Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life. Exposure to low levels of lead in drinking water will not kill anyone so the Constitution just doesn’t apply. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is. We must look to our own safety and security. One way we do that is by banding together with our neighbors to form cities or…

> Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life. It does promise the government can't take it from you without due process.

Sure, but that doesn’t apply. The Plaintiffs are not alleging that the government is executing people without due process, only that the water is less safe than advertised. Nobody has actually died, therefore nobody has been deprived of life.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#155

Post by ceejayoz »

db48x wrote: post #154
ceejayoz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the constitution promises life. But it does not promise a safe life, or a secure life, or even an unpoisoned life. It does promise the government can't take it from you without due process.

Sure, but that doesn’t apply. The Plaintiffs are not alleging that the government is executing people without due process, only that the water is less safe than advertised. Nobody has actually died, therefore nobody has been deprived of life.

So the legal theory is the government can shorten your life as long as they don't outright end it?

That seems like a novel one.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#156

Post by [deleted] »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #64
tzs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At most that will just get it dismissed against some individual plaintiffs. It won't affect their case against the city and any companies such as the engineering firm that was a defendant in this particular lawsuit.

If the engineering firm is acting as an 'agent of the state' then the protections extend to them as well. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to protect private prisons, etc from being sued, and we can't have that happening in America. So the court invented a fake protection (qualified immunity), and then invented a fake protected class called 'agents of the state'.

[deleted]

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#157

Post by jack_h »

alexgieg wrote: post #142
jack_h wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second amendment is a pretty well articulated negative right in the same manner as the first or the fourth in the classical liberal school of thought. These are natural rights that individuals have and the bill of rights merely states that these are outside of the government’s sphere. The technology being used whether it be voicing your opinion on the internet, your house being secure from searches with thermal c…

Isn't lying about the fact there's lead in water and telling them it's safe to drink a way for a government to "deprive you of life"? I mean, if any such lie, plus the associated loss of life, is allowed, government officials can in theory engineer ways to get rid of people "without due process" while keeping themselves free of any consequence. Also, doesn't the Preamble to the US Constitution say it was established…

I'm not saying the government shouldn't be held accountable, merely that the due process clause of the 14th amendment is the wrong vehicle. The right to due process in the case of deprivation of life does not mean any deprivation of life such as due to accident or negligence. It's more about the state executing you for a crime. Engineering a way to get rid of people would just be murder, there's no get out of jail free card there.

The preamble isn't a source of any substantive power.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#159

Post by db48x »

ceejayoz wrote: post #155
db48x wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that doesn’t apply. The Plaintiffs are not alleging that the government is executing people without due process, only that the water is less safe than advertised. Nobody has actually died, therefore nobody has been deprived of life.

So the legal theory is the government can shorten your life as long as they don't outright end it? That seems like a novel one.

Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process. Thus a death sentence requires a trial and appeals and so on and so forth and takes ages to actually get to the execution. Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives. It only reduces IQ and causes behavioral and cognitive disabilities.

If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig your own well, or band together with your neighbors to have municipal water. Or buy drinking water from a private company; lots of people in the US do that. Europeans are frequently shocked to learn this, but ironically private water companies have a better track record for safety than municipal water systems. We are, after all, talking about a contamination case involving a municipal water system rather than a private one.

If you dig your own well then you are responsible for ensuring that it remains safe. Regular testing and maintenance is entirely your responsibility. Of course you are allowed to delegate to a contractor, but ultimately the responsibility rests entirely on your shoulders.

If you subscribe to a municipal water system then the responsibility rests on the municipality. You will be electing someone to run the water system. Choose wisely. Your vote has actual physical safety consequences for you and your children. Furthermore you may want to write local ordinances that govern the behavior of this type of elected officials. You might want to be able to rely on them making truthful statements, for example. If so then you should put that in writing in your municipal ordinances. Many states and cities have already done just that! Off hand I don’t know if Mississippi or the city of Jackson have.

Similarly we also have laws and ordinances against the government poisoning people. It is usually illegal, in most jurisdictions, in most circumstances. We also have laws against negligence that leads to harms such as poisoning people.

Just because something isn’t in the Constitution doesn’t mean it’s legal. In this case people seem to have heard that safe drinking water isn’t guaranteed in the Constitution and jumped to the ridiculous conclusion that the government can poison people whenever it wants with no consequences.

The Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights and other amendments, is mostly a list of things that the government is not allowed to take away from the people or other parts of the government. It’s not a list of all desirable things that the people want governments to do.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#160

Post by db48x »

tavavex wrote: post #151
db48x wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our Constitution can evolve. This whole case is about an amendment to the Constitution! We don't evolve it by reinterpreting the text but by amending the text.

This was true at some point in history, but not now. It's been 34 years since the last constitutional amendment in the US, 55 years since the last successful proposal. And arguably almost the last hundred or so years of their amendments are minor, the heavy-hitters that everyone quotes and sees as truly changing the direction of the country are all from the 18th and 19th centuries. There will probably be no more amen…

Surely you would expect the rate of change to drop off after a time, right? The Constitution is not a very long document, so it cannot contain an infinite number of errors. At some point they’ll all be fixed and then no more evolution will be required. There have been some amendments that corrected omissions from the Constitution, but I don’t see how there could be an infinite number of those either.

And I don’t see why you think no future evolution can happen. The process for amending the Constitution hasn’t changed any. It remains as easy or as hard as it ever was.

But I suppose you are right that we often have activist judges who think that it is their job to reinterpret the words of the Constitution. There are quite a few bad rulings that have resulted from that. But the ideal is that we don’t reinterpret the words. It is a human failing that we sometimes succumb to the temptation.

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